Lecture 1: General problems of Foreign Language teaching

Rule for the teacher: Teach pupils how to use into-national means to express their attitude, their feelings about what they say. That can be done by giving such tasks as: reason why you like the story; prove something; give your opinion, on the episode, or on the problem con­cerned, etc,
4. Speech is always situational for it takes place in a cer­tain situation.
Rule for the teacher: While teaching speaking real and close-to-real situations should be created to stimu­late pupils' speech. Think of the situations you can use in class to make pupils' speech situational. Remember the better you know the class the easier it is for you to create situations for pupils to speak about.
These are the four psychological factors which are to be taken into account when teaching speech.
Techniques the teacher uses to develop hearing
In teaching oral, language the teacher has to cope with two tasks. They are: to teach his pupils to understand the foreign, language spoken and to teach them to speak the language.
To fulfil the task the teacher must train his pupils- in listening comprehension beginning with the first lesson and throughout the whole period of instruction. These are the techniques the teacher uses for the purpose:
1. The teacher uses the foreign language:
(a) when giving the class instructions;
(b) when presenting new language material (words, sentence patterns);
(c) when checking pupils’ comprehension;
(d) when consolidating' the material presented;
(e) when checking pupils' assimilation of the language material covered.
These are the cases when the target language is used as a means of communication and a means of teaching. There is a great deal of auding in all the points of the lesson. This raises the problem of the teacher's speech during the lesson. It should be correct, sufficiently loud, clear, and expressive. But many of the teachers are too talkative. We can hear them speaking most of the time. Moreover, some teachers speak a great deal in Russian.
Conducting a lesson in a foreign language gives the teacher an opportunity to develop pupils’ abilities in hearing; to train them in listening to him attentively during the lesson; to demonstrate the language as a means of communication; to provide favourable conditions for the assimilation of the language; to perfect his own speaking skills; to keep his own speech under control, i. е., to keep himself from undue talk­ativeness.
2. The teacher uses drill and speech exercises for develop­ing listening comprehension.
We can group drill exercises into exercises designed for overcoming linguistic difficulties, and exercises which can eliminate psychological difficulties.
The first group of drill exercises includes: